For OpenAI's commerce features to succeed, it's not enough to build one-click checkout. They must fundamentally retrain hundreds of millions of users to trust a new purchasing workflow inside a chatbot, breaking deeply ingrained habits of searching on ChatGPT then buying on Google or Amazon.

Currently, AI innovation is outpacing adoption, creating an 'adoption gap' where leaders fear committing to the wrong technology. The most valuable AI is the one people actually use. Therefore, the strategic imperative for brands is to build trust and reassure customers that their platform will seamlessly integrate the best AI, regardless of what comes next.

Though AI can assemble a shopping cart, consumers hesitate to let it complete the purchase. The efficiency of existing tools like Apple Pay and a psychological need to manually review the cart before paying create a significant barrier to adopting fully autonomous AI shopping agents.

AI model capabilities have outpaced their value delivery due to a fundamental design problem. Users are inherently scared and distrustful of autonomous agents. The key challenge is creating interaction patterns that build trust by providing the right level of oversight and feedback without being annoying—a problem of design, not technology.

While payment security is a concern, a bigger hurdle for AI commerce adoption is the question of liability. A significant percentage of consumers believe the answer engine platform would be liable for a botched transaction, a trust threshold that platforms and brands must address before adoption can accelerate.

Forrester data shows consumer trust in AI interactions like chatbots is already below 20%. When organizations rush AI implementation, they create poor, inaccessible, and unusable experiences that don't meet customer needs. This only serves to further erode consumer trust, which is the biggest risk brands face with premature AI adoption.

Contrary to narratives of skepticism, Adobe's data shows high consumer trust in AI for shopping. Customers arriving from AI sources spend 25% more, and purchases made with an AI agent are 68% less likely to be returned. This trust indicates a durable shift in consumer behavior toward AI-driven commerce.

While external AI agents pose a long-term threat, established retailers can lead in the initial phase of agentic commerce. They control crucial assets like purchase history, payment information, and—most importantly—customer trust, which are essential for driving early adoption of on-site AI assistants.

Contrary to expectations, wider AI adoption isn't automatically building trust. User distrust has surged from 19% to 50% in recent years. This counterintuitive trend means that failing to proactively implement trust mechanisms is a direct path to product failure as the market matures.